page 6 - The Behrend College Collegian. Thursday, January /5, 1998
Drug lords tainting
Colombian beauty
pageants
By Juanita Darling=(c) 1998, Los
Angeles Times
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Girls in
Colombia dream of growing up to be
queen. They imagine hearing their
names being called and walking down
the runway to be crowned queen of
rice, queen of the sea, queen for a
harvest or a day.
"Every girl wants to be queen, even
if it's queen of the house," quips Angie
Melissa Arbelaez, Miss Choco 1997.
"It's very obsessive here,' says
anthropologist Maria Victoria Uribe,
Miss Bogota 1968. "There are more
beauty contests here. ... There are
millions of queens."
Within these millions, there is a
hierarchy. Being queen of a local
festival is not the same as being queen
of tourism. The queen of Bambuco, a
folk dance, is recognized for having
talent as well as beauty.
Further, the lesser contests are often
rehearsals - or consolation prizes - for
the most royal contest of them all:
queen of Cartagena, Miss Colombia.
"To have been Miss Colombia is
almost like having been president,"
says Santiago Medina, who for many
years was a member of the committee
that selects Miss Bogota.
The Cartagena pageant, known as
"el reinado," the reign, paralyzes
Colombia every November. The army
may bomb the Supreme Court - as it
did days before the 1985 contest - and
presidential candidates may be
assassinated - as they were in 1989 -
but the whole country stops to discuss
measurements, smiles and gaits.
"The queens are a sort of oasis, an
opiate of the masses," Urihe says.
But in recent c.ll, separating el
reinado from Colombia's national
problems has becioue nem ly
impossible. This Colombian obsession
has become infest.2(l with a Colombian
woe: drue money .
As the focus has moved from the
pageant to the scandals surrounding
the contest, organizers' efforts to clean
up the pageant have spawned their
own controversies, with charges of
elitism and invasion of privacy.
The problems stem from narcotics
traffickers who sponsor candidates,
paying tens of thousands of dollars for
the designer clothes, haircuts and
training needed to compete in
Cartagena. Drug cartels compete
against each other to see whose
candidate ranks higher in the judging,
according to Eccehomo Cetina, author
of "Queen in Check," a book about
corruption at the Cartagena pageant.
"It is a symbiotic relationship," he
says. "There are social-climbing
women ... and the desire of drug
traffickers to receive recognition."
The result: embarrassment for
pageant organizers and a decline in the
prestige of the pageant.
In 1990, Maribel Gutierrez resigned
as Miss Colombia to marry Jairo
Duran, who is estimated to have
invested more than $70,000 in her
pageant wardrobe alone. Federal
prosecutors said that Duran, who was
killed in 1992, was under investigation
at the time of his death for his ties to
the Coastal drug cartel.
Gutierrez had worked hard to
become Miss Colombia. She had
competed in the pageants run by the
selection committees of Cesur,
AOL named 'gay' man
to Navy, officials
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran=(c) 1998,
The Washington Post
When Navy sailor Timothy R.
McVeigh created a "user profile" on
America Online, he didn't think his use
of the word "gay" to describe his mari
tal status would violate the Clinton
administration's "don't ask, don't tell"
policy on homosexuals in the military.
He said he was careful not to include
his full name or his occupation, refer
ring to himself only as "Tim" in "Ho
nolulu, Hawaii."
But last week, in an unusual case
that has outraged gay-rights groups
and electronic-privacy advocates, the
Navy's deputy personnel chief ordered
Magdalena and Bogota provinces -
and lost. She finally got to the
competition by representing Atlantic°,
a province too poor to put on a local
competition.
In poor provinces. Celina snvs. drug
traffickers buy the title for their
favorite aspiring queens.
Intermediaries persuade the governor
to issue a decree naming the woman
the province's representative.
On the night of the Miss Colombia
pageant, the computers calculating the
scores crashed. Hours later, when the
hand-figured scores were revealed,
Gutierrez had won.
According to rumors, never proven,
two of the five contest judges - all
prominent foreigners - had refused
Duran's offer of a bribe. Nevertheless,
they believed the death threat he
allegedly made against them and kept
quiet when the results were
announced.
Two years later, when police
searched the cell of the late drug lord
Pablo Escobar after his escape, they
found a photograph signed by Patricia
Azcarraga, one of the five finalists in
the 1991 pageant. "I am your favorite
girlfriend," she wrote. "Thank you for
the trip and all the lovely things you
gave me for Cartagena."
Last year, police found suspected
drug lord Justo Pastor Perafan at his
hide-out in Venezuela by following his
girlfriend, Luz Adriana Ruiz, Miss
Vichado 1993.
Such revelations have devastated
Colombians, who love their queens
the way other countries love their
sports teams. Especially here, fans
need a respite from violence and
their queens provide iliat.
they say. To have their queens touched
such \Auridline.,s has been
unbearable.
Further, Colombians believe that the
scandals have affected their
candidates' performance in the Miss
Universe pageant. Colombia has
produced no Miss Universe since
1958, although Miss Colombia is
often among the five finalists. In fact,
Miss Colombia was first runner-up
three years in row, from 1992 to 1994.
In an effort to clean up el reinado,
pageant director Raimundo Angulo
has spent the past three years hiring
private detectives, supervising
provincial selection committees and
devising rules that will exclude
candidates sponsored by drug
traffickers.
Many of the designers and
hairdressers most closely associated
with the contest have done the same.
"Five years ago, I would not have
thought that I would ever say this,"
notes Alfredo Barraza, who designed
wardrobes for nine of the candidates
in the November contest. "I always
check things out. The family has to
come."
Uribe, who was known as "the anti
queen" because of her outspoken ideas
and such pranks as swimming in the
hotel pool after the swimsuit
competition, says she is appalled by
what the contest has become.
"The whole thing seems grotesque
to me," she says. "For women to allow
inspections of their past, their ideas,
is grotesque." But organizers argue
that they have no other way to keep
dill!! money out.
that McVeigh - who is not related to
the convicted bomber of the Oklahoma
City federal building - be dismissed
from the service for violating the
policy, after a naval investigator testi
fied that he obtained McVeigh's iden
tity with a telephone call to American
Online Inc.
The investigator said at a Novem
ber discharge hearing that a technical
support employee at the Virginia-based
online service did not ask for a court
order before imparting McVeigh's full
name and the state of residence, ac
cording to a transcript of the proceed
ing. Privacy advocates contend that
AOL, which has 10 million subscrib-
World and Nation
Two Maryland counties ban books by black authors
By Annie Gowen=(c) 1997, The
Washington Post
Two Maryland public school su
perintendents have removed books
by prominent African American
authors from high school English
classes in recent weeks at the urg
ing of some parents who called the
works "trash" and "anti-white."
In Anne Arundel County, Super
intendent Carol S. Parham ordered
Maya Angelou's autobiographical
"I Know Why The Caged Bird
Sings - remoN (NI from the ninth
grade English curriculum, al
though it will still be taught in the
11th grade.
In St. Mary's County, School Su
perintendent Patricia Richardson
recently removed Toni Morrison's
"Song of Solomon" from the
schools' approved text list. In both
cases, superintendents overruled
faculty committee recommenda
tions to keep the books, yielding to
the wishes of small groups of par
ents.
In each case, the removal of the
book has angered many students,
"We need to take the contest back
to what it always was," Angulo says.
The first contestants, more than 50
years ago, were chosen by Colombia's
private clubs. They were from the
social elite.
Over the years, more and more
contestants have been middle-class
and working-class women who saw
the pageant as a way to open doors
for careers in entertainment, modeling
or even television news. Those
contestants are the most susceptible to
drug traffickers' attentions, organizers
say.
"Girls from poor families are
impressed by their extravagant gifts,"
says Liliana Blanco de Lara, who has
chaperoned Miss Colombia for the
past seven years. "Girls from high
social classes „ctO :cmpted because
ihcir parch ahvadv Hven !hem
a car, a driver. a maid. a house and
trips all over !h , _ world."
Angulo, wile selves without pay as
the pageant's di ectoi, is in the process
of organizing provincial committees
that will select contestants, discreetly
screening for young women from
respected families. "I am not afraid
to say that this is elitist," he says.
Each province is required to submit
its candidate's name and resume six
months in advance to allow time for a
background check. And now Angulo
is working on containing costs, which
drug financing has pushed close to six
figures per candidate.
But returning to candidates from
privileged families may be more
difficult than lowering costs and
implementing background checks.
The pageant now demands more of the
candidates' time. After months of
preparation, candidates who finish in
the top five are committed to an
additional year of service, during
which they raise an estimated
$400,000 for Colombian charities at
public appearances throughout the
country.
"Today's girls are not interested,"
Blanco de Lara says of the young
women. "They want to finish their
degree and get out of school or start
graduate work. They do not want to
spend a year being queen."
Arbelaez acknowledges that
although she relished the Cartagena
competition, she is eager to get back
to her industrial engineering classes
next term.
say
ers. flouted its own privacy policy and
that both the Navy and AOL may have
violated a federal law.
"People are given an assurance that
when they use AOL, they are doing it
with a pretty strong sense of anonym
ity," said David L. Sobel, the legal
counsel at the Electronic Privacy In
formation Center, a Washington-based
advocacy group. "This case raises se
rious questions about AOL's protection
of subscriber privacy."
An AOL spokeswoman would not
comment on the case other than to say
that the company "saw nothing in the
transcript (of the discharge hearing) to
suggest that we gave out private mem-
teachers and community activists,
who believe the objections are ra
cially motivated attacks against Af
rican American literature.
Free speech advocates say the
Anne Arundel case is highly un
usual, because race-based com
plaints about books used in U.S.
classrooms typically have focused
on concerns about negative por
trayals of African Americans, such
as in Mark Twain's "The Adven
tures of Huckleberry Finn."
Both "Song of Solomon" and
"Caged Bird" are considered by
many scholars to be modern clas
sics of African American literature.
Angelou's book, a searing look at
her childhood in segregated Arkan
sas, is a staple in high school En
glish classes across the country and
is on approved text lists in Howard
and Fairfax counties.
The book's defenders say
Angelou uses her poet's gifts to give
students an evocative portrait of
life under segregation, a firsthand
account of a dark period in history
that has the same immediacy as
Court faces Solomon's
choice on Ellis Island
By Joan Biskupic=(c) 1998, The
Washington Post
WASHINGTON With a bravado
befitting the Empire state, New York
assistant attorney general Daniel
Smirlock began his arguments at the
Supreme Court Monday with a simple
declaration: "All of Ellis Island is in
New York."
In the boundary fight between New
York and New Jersey over who can
claim most of the island that was
America's immigration gateway,
Smirlock told the justices, "When
people were born in a hospital on Eilis
Island, they were, horn in New York.
When they died on Ellis Island, thy
died in New York." Tradition, he
seemed to suggest, should be an over
riding consideration.
But New Jersey assistant attorney
general Joseph L. Yannotti insisted that
when the original three-acre island was
enlarged at the turn-of-the-century
with landfill, creating about 24 more
acres and making room for hospitals
and other buildings, that new land be
came New Jersey's.
With the federal government now
controlling the land and its preserva
tion, what is mostly at stake are the
boasting rights to a place at the heart
of the country's historic identity. But
there is also the potential for taxing the
revenue generated by any future de
velopment on the island. The case of
New Jersey vs. New York revolves
mostly around an 1834 compact that
gave New York jurisdiction over what
was then a three-acre island but said
the surrounding submerged lands and
water were New Jersey's. The ques-
ber information." "Our policy regard
ing the release of personal information
is very clear," the spokeswoman,
Wendy Goldberg, said. "We don't re
lease this information unless we are
presented with a court order, a search
warrant or a subpoena. That policy is
very clear to our employees."
The case against McVeigh has been
seized upon by gay t Jus activists,
Ito see it as the lal of t.,.\ at, ip;,; ut ;nit
they say is unfair and discriminatory
prosecution of homosexuals by the
military. They insist the Navy was un
justified in pursuing McVeigh because
of an AOL profile that he maintains
did not include his last name.
"Under 'don't ask, don't tell,' there
are supposed to be limits on investi
gations," said C. Dixon Osbum, the co
executive director of the
Servicemembers Legal Defense Net
work, a Washington-based group that
assists military personnel charged with
violating the policy. McVeigh "didn't
work hard to get on the radar screen,"
said Osbum, who is providing legal
advice to McVeigh.
A Navy official at the Pentagon, who
requested anonymity, defended the in
vestigation into McVeigh. "The Navy
views this case as a straightforward
application of existing policy." The
Navy viewed the AOL profile "as a
straightforward indication of
McVeigh's statement that he is gay,"
the official said.
Anne Frank's did
"It's the voice, the honest young
voice," said Julia Pruchniewski, a
South River High School English
teacher who called it "ridiculous"
that she can no longer use the book
in her ninth-grade classes. "It's one
thing to read about segregation
from a history textbook, another to
read it in a teenager's young voice.
It's much more vivid."
Parents and educators who favor
keeping the work have expressed
disimi that such a small group of
parents could n kid such influence
over a curriculum. About 1,500
Anne Arundel students read
"Caged Bird" this year before
Parham pulled it from the ninth
grade list of books. The decision is
the first in Pruchniewski's 20-year
teaching career in Anne Arundel
that a book was removed from the
curriculum because of parents'
objections, she said.
"It's frightening," said Maura
Stevenson, an Anne Arundel par
ent whose daughter read the book
last year as an eighth-grader at
tion is whether New York's sover
eignty is limited to the original land
mass or grew as the island was ex
panded by the landfill.
Shortly after the Supreme Court
agreed in 1994 to hear the dispute be
tween the two states, it appointed a
special master to take evidence and
make recommendations since no other
court had heard the dispute. The spe
cial master has urged the justices to
rule, based on the 1834 compact, that
part of the island is in New York and
part is in New Jersey. The master de
parted slightly irony what tie belie\ Cu
the 1834 itgrtyment dictated. sth.4gcst
int: New York he allowed to claim
about live acres. lather than three, for
reasons of practicality and con \ c
nience. Sticking with the original pact,
for example, would mean splitting
now-existing buildings between the
two states.
Some justices suggested Monday
they might be inclined to follow the
special master's advice and side with
New Jersey. Chief Justice William H.
Rehnquist at one point rejected New
York's argument that the master did not
take account of New York's continual
presence on the island, including births
and deaths, noting, "We rarely second
guess a master on a factual question."
Smirlock primarily argued that be
cause landfilling was widely practiced
in the mid-1800s, officials who signed
the compact envisioned that the island
would grow with landfill and remain
New York's. "The use of landfill on
Ellis Island was not only foreseeable,"
Smirlock told the justices, "it already
had occurred."
McVeigh, 36, a senior chief petty
officer who has been in the Navy for
17 years, said the discharge proceed
ings began after he sent a civilian Navy
employee an electronic mail message
in September asking for the ages of
chi Idren•of sailors on his submarine to
organize a holiday toy giveaway.
McVeigh said he sent the request via
M.; AUL, at:co...lla LA.A..aitse lie was ileaLl-
.A,L11.1%,2 1.1,•
sec the civilian Navy employee in per-
As is true oi all AOL hiesl ages.
McVeigh's " ; creeu naive" appeared as
the return address. Using that screen
name, the employee searched AOL's
public directory and discovered a pro
file screen, created by McVeigh, that
included the designation "gay" for
marital status. It is unclear from the
testimony in the case what prompted
the employee to search the profile.
At the November hearing, naval in
vestigator Joseph Kaiser said he called
AOL and talked to "a gentleman
named Owen at tech services," accord
ing to the transcript. Kaiser testified
that he "wanted to confirm the profile
sheet, who it belonged to. They said it
came from Hawaii and that it was
`Timothy R. McVeigh' on the billing."
Kaiser testified that the AOL repre
sentative did not provide any other data
about McVeigh.
Sobel and other privacy advocates
question whether the McVeigh case is
Severna Park Middle School. "The
school board is listening to people
who are ignorant."
Ronald Walters, professor of Af
rican American studies and politi
cal science at the University of
Maryland, agreed. "What the
school system has appeared to do
is be sensitive to a few individuals,
and that's a bad way to run a school
system. I couldn't imagine them
doing this to classics that were
boosting white self-esteem to which
black parents objec ted."
But Sue Crandall, the Anne
Arundel parent who sparked the
protest against the Angelou auto
biography, called the removal a vic
tory for common sense.
"I had to stand up for what I be
lieved in." said Crandall, who is
white. "Caged Bird," assigned to
her son this fall at South River High
School, is not appropriate for
ninth-graders because it is sexually
explicit and gives a dated and
slanted portrayal of whites,
Crandall said.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (the
court's only native New Yorker) ques
tioned whether that theory would al
low an island to expand to several
times its original size, and Justice
Antonin Scalia (the court's only New
Jerseyite) observed that legal docu
ments generally do not anticipate that
an island will grow over time.
For New Jersey's part, Yannotti con
tended there was little jurisdiction for
either state to exercise during the past
century. And disputing New York's
assertion that New Jersey cave in to
iNew uric iuiig.stanwug regulation ut
the island, Yannotti said, "Ne w
did not acquiesci:.. -
Yannotti urged the justice , ; to reject
the master's recommendation that
New York get more than the original
size of the island, for practical reasons.
"This is a case about boundaries, not
about buildings," he said, declaring
that the court is only allowed to set the
boundary as was required by the 1834
compact.
An eventual resolution of the case -
expected before the justices recess next
summer - may not be felt by the nearly
two million tourists who visit the Ellis
Island museum each year. Justice De
partment lawyer Jeffrey P. Minear,
who argued on behalf of the federal
government, supporting New Jersey,
said some modest additional tax rev
enue may be available in upcoming
years, but that the overriding interest
is a place in history.
New York now taxes concessions at
its main attraction, the museum run by
the National Park Service. New Jer
sey, meanwhile, provides its utilities.
an isolated incident of privacy viola
tions by AOL. "How many other simi
lar disclosures have been made like
this that we - or the actual account
holder - don't know about?" he asked.
Others suggest that the Navy's ap
parent success at obtaining the infor
mation from AOL without a court or
der will encourage investigators to
operate in a sunilar iusuiun 111 toe
_.\ m;.z. JR.L.I 1,:411, I,
government to start cyber-snoopinr on
American citi/ens." said h•lin
Aravosis, an Internet con.nitant
Washington who has been toting to
raise awareness of the case.
The 1986 Electronic Communica
tions Privacy Act bars service provid
ers such as AOL from knowingly giv
ing subscriber information to law en
forcement officials without a court or
der. In the McVeigh case, however, it
is not clear from the transcript that the
investigator identified himself to AOL.
McVeigh said the only evidence
given at the hearing was the profile,
which he does not deny writing. In an
interview with The Washington Post,
he would not say whether he is gay.
He disputes the Navy's contention
that the word "gay" on his profile
means he is homosexual. "You can put
in male or female, that you are green
or blue or purple," he said. "That
doesn't make it true." •